


It Doesn't Matter What You Know

by koozbane



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: other characters but only mentioned - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-24 17:41:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22101847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koozbane/pseuds/koozbane
Summary: A man aged not by all of the years he’s seen, but by coming to terms with the truth of this world.And that’s the downside to knowledge, the equalizer to the power that comes with it.It leaves you missing things you never knew you wanted, things you never valued. Things no one ever thinks about, until they’re out of reach. People are shortsighted, prone to overlooking and undervaluing anything past their basic desires and needs. A human flaw that most people never overcome
Kudos: 1





	It Doesn't Matter What You Know

**Author's Note:**

> bucky centric, post infinity war, really out of hand drabble that was only intended to be a little bit of venting through writing but now i don't know what it is.
> 
> 8,282 words that went nowhere and will probably please no one aside from myself.

There are some things in life you just have to accept. Whether they're simple or complex, they're unchangeable. The sky is (usually) blue, the grass is green. Fire is hot, ice is cold. Birds fly, fish swim. No person is wholly virtuous or evil. Government is doomed to fall to corruption. Titanium has an average density of 4.5 grams per cubic centimeter and does _not,_ in fact, float. Vibranium has an average density of 0.6 grams per cubic centimeter and _does_ float. People create war, war creates woes. A righteous act is not always a good, just as a wicked act is not always bad. Life ending is just as important as life beginning. And Steve Rogers is dead.

Bucky is coming to terms with that, now. The death of the boy he grew up kicking dented cans with. The loss of the man who shaped him into a better person than he could have - would have - been. It's taken him years to even start accept that that man is gone. Years of looking at nothing and lamenting on how the tables turned so quickly. How he can't change what he wasn't there for, and things are better like this anyway.

Steve Rogers died in the ice, or maybe inside of a metal chamber with a square window and gaggle of onlookers. He didn't know it then, maybe no one did, but that's the truth. Some might make an argument against it but Bucky knows you don't have to go into the ground to die. He's died a thousand times over, he feels like a walking corpse some days, so he knows.

The man who insisted on being part of a war that wanted nothing but to reject him is still visible in the cracks, but he’s not really there anymore. That sharp insistence has morphed, the same tune in a new key. A good man through and through, equipped with new eyes. Ones that can see the line that sometimes divides what’s good and what’s right. Able to see, now, that having the capacity for good doesn’t mean someone has any good left to give. A man aged not by all of the years he’s seen, but by coming to terms with the truth of this world.

And that’s the downside to knowledge, the equalizer to the power that comes with it.

It leaves you missing things you never knew you wanted, things you never valued. Things no one ever thinks about, until they’re out of reach. People are shortsighted, prone to overlooking and undervaluing anything past their basic desires and needs. A human flaw that most people never overcome because they don’t have the brain power to recognize it. Even those who do acknowledge it hardly move past it. Bucky thinks this is out of weakness, born from a fear of knowing too much and inheriting some responsibility or simply having to accept that the world is sad. Admitting that it's all for nothing, for shit, beyond the immediate glance is more than someone people can handle. More than most people want to handle, even if they can.

Those who can and do, like Steve, are left withered. An aging that shows more in their expressions than the wrinkles in their skin. Feeling robbed, more often than not. Yearning for a childlike naivety that they never knew they still held on to. Trying to find something to ground them in a section of reality that welcomes everyone and bends to no one. Something to reach for when everything is just beyond their grasp.

For most people, it kills them. Deconstructs their perception and knowledge of who they are, of what this is, of what everything comes down to. Only to take the pieces and paste them back together haphazardly. A person hashed together out of the remains of someone else, a gross amalgamation of traits and ideals that no only fit together. That person, whoever they were before, is gone and their visage passed on like an old jumper. A familiar name and face and voice under new ownership - a trick personified. Features no more than a disguise, a person hiding behind who they were to get away from what they know. Warped. Unbalanced. Dissolute.

Of course, this is not what killed Steve. This, for him, came after. Bucky knows because he was around to watch some of it, to see the way the world morphed him. He can't recall all of it, can't handpick individual memories or instances, but he remembers. These recollections pass in his mind like damaged film on a projector, watery flashes of images that make the people in them seem like their floating. The changes brought about by them, in them, are so gradual he can hardly tell when the images got so distorted.

Steve died in that cramped metal chamber, with something like poison in his veins. That's a fact now, because the more Bucky laments on when it happened the more clear it becomes. He's sure of it, able to look back and know that that man was dead long before the ice made itself his home.

Captain America came out of that compact space, and only the Captain. It wasn't Steve who found him and the other captured soldiers in Austria, though Bucky hadn't realized it at the time. It wasn't Steve who glued together the Howling Commandos. It wasn't Steve who saw those battlefields, who breathed in the smoke and found himself deafened by gunfire. It wasn't Steve who watched the sun rise and fall with them, unable to appreciate the sight in their circumstances.

That man was gone the moment the serum mixed into his blood, lost to a moniker and a shield.

Once there was a boy, who grew into a man, whose small stature and weak body hid a might beyond men ten times his size. A man who couldn't force his way through the odds, but always pushed and squirmed and weaseled by with nothing but patience and determination. Frail but strong, thin but sturdy. A man who fought for others even if they wouldn't have fought for him, who defended people who might not have even known they needed it. A man who wanted people to be better, because he knew he could be better. A man who asked because it was _right_ even if it wasn't always what needed to be done for what was good. A man who tried to work with the world to change the tilt of the axis.

In the place of that man now is a man who exists as a construct as much as he does physically, a man who lives as an appellation more than a man. Someone who knows they can forcefully forge a path, even if he doesn't want to. Someone whose name and stature alone cement him as an authority, imposing in reputation and compassionate in anecdotes. Someone who fights even if no one calls, even if no one wants it, because it's what needs to be done for what's good. Someone who knows not everyone can be better, or wants to be better, and knows that you can't force them. Someone who stopped asking years ago, because he doesn't have to now and sometimes it doesn't make a difference. Someone who fights against everything to just keep things balanced, because no one can change the way the world works.

Bucky doesn't wish things could have been different anymore, because he knows that isn't how things work. This is how things are, and how they have to be, and how they have to have been. There was never any future for either of them in Brooklyn, in their time.

Had Steve never become Captain America, he would have died before the war was over. From sickness most likely, but there's a fair chance he would have gotten himself into some trouble while alone in the city. Saying trouble found Steve would be a blatant lie, he searched for it religiously. And even if Bucky hadn't fallen off of that train it would have been inconsequential. That man, that Bucky, died before the fall. While Steve grew into a new man, one with fewer boundaries and restrictions and more strength to pull the strings, the truth killed him. Harsh reality tore away who he was and what he knew, grueling battles and grotesque imagery branded into his thoughts.

If anyone were asked, hypothetically, or even musing on when Bucky died they would likely guess during the fall. When he laid in the snow and let the ice touch his bones, blood dying the snow around his mangled arm, accepting death only to blink into the eyes of a mad scientist looking for _more_ \- he had died, hysterical in the realization that there was no mercy and he had strutted himself right back into the jaws of a beast. But that wasn't the first time.

It had started in the mud, his chin down in thick sludge as he watched another man's life fade in front of him. Death and horror made themselves common companions during the war, and the things he saw - the things they had to _do_ \- are what started eating away at him first. All concepts of what was fair and right were muddled with words of what needed to be done, obscured by the unfortunate knowledge that good things have to be molded from bad actions. Learning that doing what was right, what was good, never meant getting what you want. Wondering, as he found himself unable to look away from their last breaths, if the people they were fighting all had to be bad. Seeing that not everyone he fought alongside was worth dying for.

All of it had weighed on him, but Bucky stayed. He fought and he screamed and he cried himself dry and he did what he was told to do because he knew, at that time, he was doing what was meritorious. That had been enough to steady him, enough to distract from the fact that leaving wasn't an option regardless. It had kept his feet planted on the ground, preserved the roots of that man.

Laying on a cold slab, delirious from deprivation and foreign drugs, bruised inside and out, seeing nothing but hard walls and sinking into metal and dangerous faces - that's where Bucky Barnes died.

There are many things from before the fall and after that Bucky doesn't remember, and even more that come only in fragments that won't stitch together. But he remembers that room, he remembers how the hours bled into days and weeks, how time seemed insignificant in the dim lighting. How his muscles went stiff from hardly being able to move, and when he laid still for so long it ached to adjust himself. Cold sweat on his temples and neck, dirty coating his clothes, arms sticky with blood and tender from being poked and prodded so many times. Bucky remembers most vividly the way the cold metal eventually felt like extensions of his own body, blended against his skin for so long that the smooth surface was a comfort.

Accepting that he would likely die there, a prisoner of war, was easy. Such a possibility had been framed before all of them before they hit enemy soil. Spoken of as a sacrifice for their people, for each other as brothers, for the future. A brave and commendable death that would be taken to their families like a gift, their names strung together like fairy lights on some mural in some museum. Immortalized in writing, certainly, but forgotten as soon as people step away. A noble ending to their tales, read and remembered only by their families and comrades. After that, just a name. A tally mark on a wall.

So he had waited, as he did many times in his life, for death. They had been beaten and caged and many of them had died, one way or another, so he was expecting that. Hoping for it, the longer he sat rotting from the inside out in that room. It was exactly what he should have done, exactly what many people do in war, and Bucky was okay with that. He had come to terms with it being his most likely release from the waking nightmare they all shambled through.

It's impossible to tell how long he spent there, during that first Hydra sponsored slumber party, without consulting another source. What matters is that it felt like eons, suspended and on display, trying to catalogue what was happening through a disorienting haze. Struggling to remember the faces of the agents who came and went, to figure out what they were saying. Their words had melted together into an unrecognizable language, mocking his inability to understand.

Bucky had laughed when he realized they weren't going to cut his metaphorical cord, high and hysterical as the metal catches dug into his numb appendages. He had laughed and spat incomprehensibly until they knocked him out.

The Bucky Barnes who was nailed down to that table originally never woke up. Instead there was a man, haunted.

Not that he ever expected them to be, but things were never the same after that. It took years for him to admit he was changed, and many more after that to grieve for the man who died within those walls. Left with a pile of rubble to mark his final resting place, an indication of destruction and something lost beneath the stones. Being saved felt like a curse to live more than a gift of freedom. Cheering beside the other soldiers for his friend had felt like a dirge than a chant of victory, a grim play at foreshadowing he initiated himself.

Going home after that was painful to think about, knowing he would bring a stranger into the home of what should be his family. Knowing he would be peering down every street and alley and into ever car window with suspicion. Knowing what was out there, what was happening, and being idle. Staying still at all was uncomfortable. Steve had offered him the Commandos, and Bucky had made his mind up before he even knew what the question was.

So there they were, pretending, masking themselves as men who would never be seen again outside of photos. That was before Bucky became less than a man, more than a machine. Something just short of a monster and just past being a myth. Dead on paper, as he should be, and living on time he never asked for. Indulging himself in a life he shouldn't have, doesn't want, because he knows there's nowhere else to go.

Sam tells him he shouldn't think like that, shouldn't box himself in as if he has no options. Restrict himself and his life due to what the other man says is a combination of guilt and self loathing that leads to self destructive tendencies. _The only person limiting your options,_ Bucky hears the words as if the man is right in front of him, _is you._

Which is a nice thought, but it isn't true. He might have been pardoned and hailed as a prisoner of war, given leeway as a man manipulated and mutilated from the inside, but it doesn't change anything. Bucky isn't stupid or naive enough to think it does. SHIELD, and likely every person aware of his full history, is always going to be keeping tabs on him. Watching. Waiting. Wanting.

The freedom he has now only comes with the burden of being underneath the Avengers, guarded as much as he is under observation. Sam can tell him as much as he wants that his life is his own, and he can have what he wants, and he can be _done_ if he wants to be done - Bucky knows this is a fantasy. Wanting to go back to Wakanda and tend to goats all day and night isn't going to make that his life again. Wanting to be done fighting doesn't mean he is. Things aren't that simple, and the part of him that craves peace and structure is evenly matched with the part of him that itches to be moving and acting and can't stop counting the people and the exits.

No amount of wanting alone can carve a new path. Bucky knows that, he isn’t ignorant and he isn’t petulant enough to pretend it isn’t the truth. 

In any case, he doesn’t need someone trying to pick through his head and categorize his thoughts and feelings for him. He got enough if that in Wakanda, letting someone else fix his mess for him because he was too incompetent to overcome it on his own. Meticulously gluing his mentality back together with more care and precision than he ever would have been able to conjure himself. A daunting thought, considering the girl who made it happen hardly knew him then. If Bucky wants to go around putting words to the jumble of disconnected emotions and mental wanderings he’ll do it himself. And he doesn’t want to, so he hasn’t.

Sam is just trying to help. This is something that Bucky has to tell himself constantly to keep from saying something snide or purposely rock their precariously repaired boat. He's just doing what he thinks is good, and right, and trying to help someone else. Because that's what a good man, a man who deserves to wield the shield, would do. The words of advice and sympathy have no malicious intent, there's nothing hostile in his actions.

That doesn't mean Bucky doesn't hate it, though. The pity ingrained in his attempts at assistance are something unavoidable. Parents force their kids to play with the kid seen as an outcast because they think that's right, because they think that's the right way to teach their offspring to support others. Those children grow into adults who push their approaches to recovery on others, pressing and prodding against unseen boundaries because they think that everyone wants or needs their advice even if they don't ask for it. It's this kind of self-righteousness that makes him sneer, forcing Sam's well intended sentiments aside.

Bucky doesn't need, doesn't want, someone else deciding what he should and shouldn't think or say or feel. That's his, now.

For the first time in a long time, the one thing Bucky gets to decide is what to think. What to feel. It's hard to tell, some days - most days, really. The voice of the Soldier constantly gripes at him, murmurs of influence that get hard to separate from his own. The whispers of a man who lived decades ago, flashes of a man gone cold, come through on the good days. And those are hard to set aside too, the momentary lightness of channeling someone certain of his foundations is a horrifying distraction. But that's all it is: momentary. It's not permanent, Bucky can't be that man again, so he has to let it go.

His situation now is a laughable opposite to the life he had lived for so long before this one. A life of death and questionable existence, iced over glass and freezing metal veins. Bucky had been the Soldier, and the Soldier didn't think much of anything. The Soldier was told he didn't have feelings, so he didn't. Acknowledging any flaws in his programming, because there are always flaws, was inconvenient to the Soldier. It would take him away from the mission, whatever it was at the time, and he was only ever there for the mission. How he went about accomplishing his tasks, though? That was his choice.

The Soldier could go as he needed, because all he knew was the mission and all he needed was to go and then come back and wait to move again. It wasn't a matter of wanting, because the Soldier knew he wasn't capable of _wanting_ because he wasn't _made_ to want, so he never wanted to leave. So he never did. He went for the mission, he came back only to wait. What he did to get there, to get it done, to get back - all of that was his decision. There was no leash keeping him within the lines, no restrictions on where he could go or what he could do when he needed to get the job done because the Soldier knew that it was what had to be done. It was what was right.

Now Bucky goes where he's told to go, where he's told he is allowed to go. He goes where he can be watched, where he can be guarded despite not wanting it. He goes where they think he isn't dangerous, but Bucky knows he's always going to be dangerous. It's part of what he is, it's something he'll never be able to lose even if he tries.

Even here, alone in a room that seems to expand with each breath, he's dangerous.

At the front of the room stands a wooden podium, presented in front of eight rows of chairs. The windows are tall and thin, decorated glass that provides no security. There are two doorways on his left that lead into the hallway, another behind him that he knows leads only to a closet full of reading materials. On the back wall, a short ways from the closet, are to long tables that have been pushed together.

Bucky is seated in the middle of the audience of chairs, feet planted on the floors and arms stiff at his sides, because he knows the chairs provide good obstacles and are easy to throw if need be. Because in the two middle seats the podium blocks the line of sight through the window ahead of him. Because he can see all ofthe windows, to his right and front, and both of the exits. Because he's counted the number of strides it would take him to reach a window, or a door, and placed himself an even number from each. Because he still counts the exits, the windows, the steps, the number of different voices (four) drifting in from the halls -

One voice in particular catches his attention as it moves closer, and then Bucky can hear the footsteps that accompany it. Even, sure, firm, heavy. Thick rubber against tile, the faint _click_ of metal sliding against sturdy synthetic fabric. Just by the beat of the steps alone he knows who it is, it doesn't matter that they've stopped speaking.

"Late again." Light words, smooth tone, it comes from the door on the right-hand side of the left wall. "That makes, what, a dozen times now?"

With a grimace, Bucky acknowledges his common companion via a tilt of his head. "It might if I operated on your personal schedule."

"Are you implying your life _doesn't_ revolve around me?" Sam Wilson steps into the room, huffing. "That hurts me, man."

"Good." He shrugs.

Instead of dignifying that with a response, the other man looks around. "Did Rhodes tag along?"

"Clint." Is all Bucky offers to correct him.

Sam nods as if this is the most interesting information he's been offered all day. Which, it isn't. Someone has to come with him every time Bucky visits the VA. It had taken months to get him to come here, both due to his lack of desire to come and due to the discomfort brought by his being in public. So someone has to come with him, because they all know he brings a certain amount of risk with him everywhere he goes.

Usually it's Rhodes who comes with him, a calm and constant presence. He never goes far, but he allows Bucky to have some space. He sits on the chair in the hallway, positioned between the two doors, while Bucky sits in this wide room with the company of ghosts. Gives him room to breathe while maintaining contact. Rhodes doesn't have to say it, but he knows that he needs this. He never attends Sam's meetings, but he likes to come after. Likes to imagine that he can reconcile with himself in the energy of others moving forward.

On the other hand, Clint doesn't seem to care what Bucky does when they go out. The archer constantly leaves him to his own devices, always finding one excuse or another to disappear. Feigning indifference as he flounces away. Bucky isn't sure if he trusts him or if he's just stupid, but he's leaning toward the latter.

"Still in Nevada?" Sam asks when nothing else is offered.

Bucky only nods, but when he looks over he can see dark brows raised. Encouraging - insisting - that he provide more substance to the conversation. "Still in Hawthorne."

"The army depot?" The question seems innocent enough, but Bucky knows that Sam knows the answer already.

"Yeah."

Sam steps forward until he reaches the edge of the rectangle of seating. "I thought he wrapped that up?"

"Something with the engineering facilities." Bucky informs him curtly. "Take a couple more days."

This is how it goes every week. Bucky only comes to the VA once a week because he knows if he trails in after the meetings any more than that he's admitting he might want to come to the actual meeting. Every week he sits here, he gets his time, and then Sam comes to find him. Starts up a dialogue one way or another, and presses for consistent responses. Pushes for Bucky to entertain the conversation and give it momentum. Nags at him to contribute, to be an active participant.

"Where's Clint?"

Bucky snorts. "Your guess is as good as mine."

"You lost him?" Sam pulls a concerned face, brows furrowing.

"I'd prefer to say I released him into the wild." The words leave his mouth before his brain fully processes them, fueled by another man.

The flash of _something_ seems to please Sam, his lips quirking in a teasing that would once have made the older man paranoid. "He's not an animal."

Raising his brows, Bucky turns his head to fully face the other man. "Have you seen him eat pasta?"

"I've seen you pick up a bowl of oatmeal and slurp it like broth." Sam's expression twists in disgust. "You ate an orange whole yesterday - and that was after I watched you peel it with your teeth."

"Efficiency." Comes his quick argument, shoulders lifting in a sharp shrug.

"Not a valid excuse to act like you were raised by literal wolves." Sam's lips quirk further upward, a sure sign of being amused at his own not-really-a-joke.

Bucky finds himself playing along, like he always does, with ease. "Then what's Clint's excuse?"

Looking thoughtful, Sam rolls the question over and screws his eyes to the ceiling. Then, very seriously: "He might have been raised by wolves."

"Right." The dark haired man snorts.

"It's possible." Sam shrugs loftily. "Now that I think about it, it's never come up."

This is a ridiculous thing to be debating, it's silly, and Bucky knows they probably have more important things to do than be silly. Bracing his hands on his knees, the stocky man pushes himself to his feet. He takes another fleeting look around the room, already longing for the reassuring stillness of the room. When he turns to exit the arrangement of chairs Sam steps backward to get out of his path. The movement is almost hasty, as if he doesn't want to block him in. Trap him in the line of curved plastic seats.

Not many people would think about it like that, imagining the simple act of loitering there as an attempt at being a blockade. Sam does. Not that Bucky did, or would, feel trapped by him. The other man isn't trying to pose a threat to him. Plus, Bucky could overpower him without his vibranium arm locked into place. Literally. It's not that Sam is incredibly small, but Bucky has more weight to him. More muscle. More enhancements from human experimentation.

Still, Bucky appreciates the gesture. He passes a nod to Sam as he steps forward, because vocalizing his thanks would only come out with an undesired edge.

Because he knows, they both know, that it might have been out of consideration for Bucky that the other man gave him the extra space. But it's also because they both know Bucky is dangerous, even if he doesn't mean to be. Maybe it's a selfless motion but it's more likely that Sam, like Bucky, thought about the last time someone blocked him in like that.

Having control, or being more in control than he has been in decades, doesn't mean there aren't still moments where Bucky _reacts_ more than he would like to admit and loses himself. It had been an accident on both ends. They had been sparring and he had gotten too worked up, a hand too tight on his jaw, his vest too tight around his shoulders. Sam let him go quickly enough and Bucky retreated, poised to go for the exit, tried to fight back his rough breaths.

Wanda hadn't been meaning to spook him, he knows she only wanted to help, but it had been nothing but instinct to move when she stepped into his path. Whatever words her lips had been forming were lost. Not even considered. Bucky had grabbed her shoulder and put her against the wall before he could even register doing it, let alone figure out what she was saying. By the time his brain was catching back up, though, she had him held to the floor by burning streaks of liquid power.

"I'm serious, man." Sam breaks his train of thought. "Have you ever heard anyone talking about it?"

Bucky levels him with a flat but mildly amused look, one brow raised. "No."

"And you're not curious?"

"No."

Sam frowns at him, wagging a finger in an accusatory fashion. "Bullshit."

"Why would I be?"

The two men leisurely walk toward the door on the right, Bucky just a few steps behind his comrade. Sam stops just outside the door, as he always does. At this point he's stopped finding reasons to do it, like checking out the bulletin board or pretending to look for someone. Now he just lingers slightly to the side, rocking on his heels patiently. Bucky chooses to ignore him, as he always does, in favor of doing a quick survey of the hallway. There's only one other person, leaned in the doorway of a room up ahead. Female, mid-thirties, auburn hair, maybe one hundred and forty pounds tops. In her hands are some papers, her hands shuffle them as she idles in the threshold.

Not a threat, he decides as Sam pipes up. "Where do you think he went?"

"Trading top secret recipes with the retired nurse." Bucky knows her name is Barbara, but he thinks calling her by name might seem a bit stalker-y and he doesn't really need that. "He was still talking about those pecan cookies this morning."

"He's determined."

With a shrug, he slowly follows Sam down the hallway. Their steps echo a little, bouncing off of the walls and back to their ears. Up ahead he can hear the girl, talking about some fundraiser event. She looks nervous, Bucky notes as she fidgets with the papers and looks down the hall at them before shying away. A long time ago, he would have thought about how pretty she is. The light lipstick painted onto her features pairs nicely with her hair, her bone structure is enviable, her skirt flatters her figure, her posture is decent.

Now he just looks over her form to make sure there's no sign of a hidden weapon, squints at her expression to discern whether the quickness with which she averts her gaze from him is due to her nerves or something more. There's not, and there's nothing more to it. Bucky's attention leaves the woman when she steps further into the room, obscured partially by the frame of the door as she leans forward.

Instead, Bucky's ears catch on a new sound. Rubber on tile, the jingle of metal bouncing against metal, fabric shuffling, something crunching. Coming to a stop, the former assassin turns to face the direction they just came from. Sam, noticing his pause, turns as well. Exiting the room they were in just a few minutes ago comes Clint, messy brunette hair hiding his face as he drops his chin. He's shoving something into his mouth, oblivious to their stares as he ambles closer.

Scoffing, Sam rolls his eyes to the man beside him. "How did he get in there?"

Bucky shrugs again. "Stop trying to figure it out."

"How long do you think he was in there?"

Clint starts talking around the snacks in his mouth, waving his free hand aimlessly. "I was looking for you guys, you left me." How brows rise comically. "What if I had gotten lost?"

"One can only hope." Sam sighs.

"You would miss me." Clint shoves another handful of what looks like graham crackers into his maw.

Whispering, Sam looks pointedly at the man shoveling shacks messily into his mouth. "Wolves."

Bucky elbows his companion and gives him an annoyed look. Then he looks to the man still a few paces away. "Are you ready?"

"I'm always ready." The archer confirms. "Car's outside."

"You coming?" Bucky directs this question to Sam.

"Yeah."

"Wanna hit a drive through?" Clint asks conversationally as the three of them meet up and head toward the exit. "I won't tell Fury if you won't."

Sam grimaces. "I'm more worried about Happy."

The two of them continue in meaningless conversation as they go. Clint goes through the door first, Bucky in the middle, Sam last. This is always the order, a conscious arrangement by the trio. Clint is the best of them at getting a keen look within a moment, never missing the glint of a scope, the flash of a blade, or the shade of a gun. Bucky has the best reaction time, and is the most durable. Sam is the most vulnerable of them, but likely to have the best quick-grab plan and the awareness to pull the other two into it.

It gives Bucky time to take in the outside, too. He can count the cars parked against the sidewalk ahead of them (six) and the number of people on each side of the street (six on the opposite, three on theirs) and the number of cars waiting at the red light (four). He can take in the man on his phone, and the woman walking her dogs, the group of young adults across the street, and he can reassure himself that none of them are notable. None of them are dangerous.

Parked in front of the building is a sleek black car, the kind of car he might have drooled over in his youth. Dark windows and clean metal, so close to looking new that he can see his reflection. Bucky unconsciously stares himself down, assessing the man looking back at him clinically. There's no appreciation in his eyes as he looks at the muddles reflection, no admiration.

His eyes, though he knows the color is a lighter blue, seem dark against the black paint. His hair almost blends in. The fingers on his flesh hand twitch as he resists the urge to raise his hand and touch it. Clint had convinced him to cut his hair recently, just a little longer than it was during the war. It's different, weird to not brush back long stray hairs or be able to pull it into a quick bun, but his reflection almost seems more familiar. It brings unwanted attention to the sharper lines of his face, though, makes him more recognizable. Harder to hide.

Rather belatedly, Bucky curses his decision not to wear a hat or a hooded jacket, and lifts his shoulders toward his ears.

Glancing over his shoulder, Clint gives him an amused look. The sight of someone so stocky and imposing trying to curl into themselves and hide is hard not to laugh at. He looks silly, his expression almost that of a begrudging child. Snorting, he turns forward again to open the door of the car and slides into the third row, stretching himself out like a cat to claim the entire three seats. One of his dirty boots is propped onto the grey seats, the other in the floor, and his elbow is on the headrest.

"You were wrong, by the way." The brunette man remarks conversationally.

Bucky stiffly bends down to get into the car, pulling his knees closer to fit behind the driver's seat. Sam joins him in the second row, his slimmer build fitting a little more comfortably. Before either of them can be assed to ask what, exactly, they were wrong about Clint continues.

"I grew up in a circus."

Sam looks at Bucky, as if _he_ can tell whether or not they're being bamboozled. Which, you know, he can't. So they both just stare at each other for a while in a sort of tense silence. Like maybe this is an interrogation, and they might be getting fed false intel. Going back and forth between squinting and giving him a wide-eyed look of question, Sam tilts his head back and forth as the two of them silently debate it. It sounds ridiculous, out loud, but this is _Clint_ and he's just kind of ridiculous as a whole.

Finally, as the car starts up, Sam seems to come to a decision. "You're fucking with us."

"I'm not." Clint holds a hand up as if _that's_ at all reassuring.

"You have to be." Brunneous eyes rolling, Sam shakes his head. "It's too much, even for you."

"This is too much, but scientifically enhanced men in freezers and real life Norse gods aren't?" Clint snorts, then leans forward to look toward the driver. "Can one of you tell him to stop somewhere for food? Literally, the next place he sees."

Bucky thinks back to when he tried to dig up as much information as he could on the other Avengers, and looks behind him curiously. "You have school records."

"You did know something!" Sam yelps at him, affronted.

Cocking a brow, he shrugs. "Did you really think he was raised by wolves?"

"Maybe."

Clint cuts in rapidly, swatting at their shoulders. "Seriously, guys, come on, someone tell him to stop." He looks out the window forlornly as they pass a fast food place, then meets their expectant stares and sighs like they're the problematic ones. "I dropped out."

"And went to the circus?" Sam questions seriously.

Bucky leans forward to reach the driver and put in Clint's request. He doesn't really care about getting food, but there are benefits to going. It changes up their route, makes them less predictable and puts off anyone who might being trying to track or follow them. But also, it'll be funny to see the others blow a gasket over it. And see SHIELD foot the bill for the feast the archer is about to order for everyone. Their driver seems more confused than annoyed, he asks twice if they're sure they don't care where it is, and nods when the conversation is over.

"You never wanted to join the circus?" Clint raises this like it's a fair point, and his sure disposition is a little convincing.

"When I was six, maybe." Comes Sam's quick retort.

"So I did what ever six year old dreams of doing."

When the umber skinned man looks at him, Bucky frowns. "What?"

The smaller man smacks his leg lights with the back of his hand. "Don't pretend you can't tell if he's lying."

"I can't." Bucky replies flatly. "That's not how it works."

"Are you sure?" Sam asks, as if there is any chance that he isn't.

"This isn't a film."

Looking incredibly offended, Clint leans forward with his fingers curled over the back of their seat. "Hey!" His blue eyes dance between the two of them indecisively. "I'm not a _liar_ you know. That's a pretty harsh accusation we're tossing around."

"This is exactly the kind of thing you would lie about." Sam scoffs. "Just so that when we bring it up, everyone else acts like we're crazy and laughs themselves sick."

"I would not!"

Bucky frowns back at him, eye sharp with a challenge. "Stacy."

When the shorter man in the back freezes and chokes on a laugh, Sam takes a turn to look lost. "Who is Stacy?"

"Who _is_ Stacy, Clint?" The enhanced man looks a little dangerous, but the two of them can see the joke in the lines around his lips. The light in his eyes, the lack of a void, the relaxed set of his brows. "Go on."

Cheeks puffing up like water balloons, Clint tries to contain another bout of laughter. It escapes with a farting noise out of his lips that he very obviously transitions into fake coughs. Sam can't get the brunette to meet his eyes, and Bucky is too busy staring the other man down to acknowledge him and let him in on the joke. It would be a little annoying, if it weren't just sort of nice to see them all joking again.

"Sam has met Stacy." Clint manages, once he's done having a fit.

"No I haven't." Sam glances at Bucky hesitantly. "Have I?"

"You have." Is all Bucky says patiently, not diverting his gaze.

"Okay..." Trailing off, his brows pinch together.

Clint clears his throat obnoxiously, slouching back into his seat casually. "It's just a nickname."

"A nickname." Repeats Sam, wanting to pretend he understands the mockery of a conversation going on around him. "For who?"

There's a short pause before Clint is pursing his lips and looking at Bucky. "He won't find it funny."

"Neither did Stacy." The sniper jabs, cocking his head.

"It was funny." Clint directs this to Sam, prematurely defending himself.

Bucky finally releases Clint from his reticle as he faces forward to seat himself more comfortably, eyes falling on the odd one out. "Clint told me Laura's name was Stacy."

This seems like a simple statement, at first. But then Sam has to think about when Bucky would have had the chance to meet Clint's family. It's not like they hang around any of the Avengers or SHIELD compounds, or see them off from missions, and no one has visited the Barton Homestead in a while. (Though it is worth noting that Clint keeps insisting they're all coming for Thanksgiving, because his wife is quite possibly the best cook he has ever met.) Which doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room for introductions and group events.

Sam's brow furrows as he thinks about it, and Clint manages to act nonchalant while Bucky waits for the realization to hit him. Bucky has seen Laura in person only three times, and spoken to her on two of those occasions. The most recent was at an event sponsored by Pepper, where she treated him far too warmly and he absconded before she could move the conversation past a greeting and a pleasantry. Bucky had known well enough that he shouldn't be talking to her, that he shouldn't force her image to be associated with his even briefly in public.

The first time Bucky had seen Laura was at a distance, her eyes wet and her clothes dark. Clint had looked at her like she held the world in her hands, like just being beside her took away some of the weight of what they were doing. What they were going through. That had been the first time he spoke to her, as well. He had tried not to speak to anyone he didn't have to, but it was impossible to skate past everyone.

"No." Sam says, hard. He slowly looks from Bucky to Clint, expression stern.

Clint's innocent turn of his lips isn't convincing at all. "What?"

"At the funeral, really?" Sam rubs at his eyes and hides his face, because he shouldn't laugh.

It should _not_ be funny to imagine the confused, horrified look the former assassin must have had on his face. Or the way Laura must have reacted. Or the cackling from Clint and the scolding he got later. It should not be funny, because pulling that sort of mind meddling prank on a brainwashed super soldier who just recently got brought out of a block of ice could have gone horrible wrong. The prank shouldn't have even been considered, at a funeral of all places.

And yet, there's the twitch of Bucky's lip. The slight, crooked tilt of silent laughter. The gentle shake of Clint's shoulders. Bucky's look of mortification had been absurd, his jaw slack and his eyes wide with panic as he looked around for an escape. Laura had looked a mixture of concerned and confused, like maybe she thought he had some sort of brain damage or might have mistaken her for someone else. Bucky had hurriedly spat out some gibberish in an attempt to salvage the situation, awkward and stiff and he leaned away from the small woman like she was dangerous.

Clint's laugh had given him away, and earned him a sharp swat on the shoulder. It had been funny. Maybe a little inappropriate, but funny nonetheless. And Bucky didn't really know Tony, and he didn't really know the woman Natasha grew to be, but he thinks they would have laughed too. From what he's heard and knows, it seems like exactly the thing either one of them would have been giddy to see. Whether they showed it openly or not.

"She was going to go along with it, too." Clint says with a bark of a laugh. "Just to save you the embarrassment."

Sam snorts through his fingers. "Maybe she thought your old age was getting to you."

"She looked at me like I'd grown a second head." Bucky puts in dryly.

Both of the other men exchange a look, and then Clint grins impishly. "Or had a metal arm?"

"Something like that." Bucky says lightly.

The car slowing to a stop brings a pause to their conversation, but Sam is still smothering a chortle as the others in the car look out the windows. They're pulled up to an unfamiliar diner. It looks a little dirty on the outside; the glass on the windows is smudged, the flowers set up in front of them are wilting, there are only a few people inside the establishment, and Bucky thinks he kind of loves it. Clint just looks excited to be able to purchase more food, clambering out of the car with all the grace of a moose that grew up on its own.

Sam only seems to recover his composure when their small friend elbows him in his scrambling. He's out of the door without a word, having forgotten all about them and Stacy at the thought of something warm to put in his stomach. Bucky watches as his companion leans out of the door with an insulted shout of reprimand, yanking at his buckle as he goes to follow. The grown men might as well be children, bickering the way they do. It's a wonder anyone puts up with each of them alone, much less all posted up together like hounds.

Bucky knows that that's all they can rely on nowadays, there's a bit of security in knowing that there are at least people who will tolerate your existence around. They might not even necessarily like each other, and that's fine. But they're there, and they know the truth behind the stains and controversies in their public images, and they can at least pretend that that's fine. He knows that's all they can ask for, even if he knows none of them belong.

Just a few feet away, one foot on the ground and the other still poised inside the car, Sam pauses. Then he turns to look at Bucky, something significant in the way he watches his face as he fully exits the vehicle and rests a hand on the edge of the door.

"You coming in?"

It's a simple question, Bucky knows that, but it feels like more. He looks out of the window on his side and he can see Clint inside bouncing on his toes as he looks at a menu. He can't remember the last time he went to eat in a diner, without hiding, without paying with stolen money, like it was normal. It's rare that he gets the chance to do these things, and most invitations are turned down regardless. The risk usually outweighs the reward, there are too many people, too many unknowns.

Another glance inside and he can make out the few customers, a young couple seated in the corner with shy eyes and fond giggles. An old man with a coffee and a plate of eggs, Clint standing beside him and pointing at the menu seriously. There's a cook standing behind the counter, conversing with the petite waitress beside him. An older man taking the order of the couple. They aren't in a hurry, either.

"Okay."

Sam blinks once, twice. "Okay?"

"I'm coming in." Bucky pops open his door and puts his foot on the ground, raises himself out of the car and looks at Sam over the top.

"Okay." Sam says with a nod and Bucky knows that, if nothing else, at least they're the most dangerous thing on the block.


End file.
